-273.15 celsius, known colloquially as “absolute zero,” represents the lowest temperature we’ve been able to reach in a laboratory setting. Beyond just being (both literally and physically) really, really cool, achieving temperatures near or at absolute zero also brings out weird properties in matter (like superfluidity and superconductivity).

It was a tough time picking out the picture for this number. I went on a journey through the corridors of frozen people cosplay. If you’re interested, here are a few choice selections:

Running average of all numbers under 10 Million: 221.7125
Running average of all numbers It's reasonable to include: 221.7125

60 has a lot of really interesting mathematical and cultural properties:

60 is often used as an age marker for senior citizenship. Remind your parents of this the next time you see them!

60 is the atomic number for Neodymium, a soft metal often used to color glass and make magnets that tarnishes in air.

The 1951 song Sixty Minute Man was a seminal (pun intented) rock-and-roll single. It describes a very specific, four-part lovemaking formula (including a 15-minute climax that chills the soul to imagine) that got it banned from many radio stations.

60 is a “semiperfect” number, which means that some or all of its divisors can sum to it exactly (ex: 30+20+10 = 60)

It’s also an “abundant” number because the sum of ALL of its divisors is greater than the number itself.

60 Watts is the standard incandescent bulb wattage in the United states.

60 is the highest level you could reach in Vanilla World of Warcraft (You’re welcome, Jbear).

There are 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour. This is likely a remnant of the Babylonian number system, which was also based around the concept of 60. It is possible the abundant and multifactored nature of 60 led to it becoming the numeric base of Babylon, because it’s possible to split a lot of 60 in so many different ways.

Paul Simon actually thought of 60 ways to leave his lover, but ended up cutting 10 for time.

60 is the sum of a pair of twin primes (29+31) and the sum of four consecutive primes (11+13+17+19).

The acceleration of a car from 0-60mph is a standard measure of its performance.

A 60 year anniversary is considered a “Diamond” anniversary, and means something’s been going on for the majority of a human lifetime.

Running average of all numbers under 10 Million: 189.37
Running average of all numbers It's reasonable to include:189.37

Correction: we have never measured a thing with 'zero absolute' temperature. Is it because of the uncertainty principle? I think there is more to it than that, but i'm impossibly drunk right now to think about it and to do research.

For the weekends, I'm going to highlight a few numbers that didn't make the list by a long shot, but were still really interesting to hear about or see on other people's lists. Despite being mentioned by only one or two people in our group, they still had interesting stories behind them. Enjoy these numbers that you may not have even considered!

Person Chipping Away Just a Little Bit More of That:
DFalcon Ranked at #14

I loved this entry because it was so specific, and yet manages to prove how much about numbers is hard to express, with, well, numbers. DFalcon’s explanation is a totally understandable idea that’s really hard to express in numeric notation. We can all see that the number he’s talking about exists, and we can grasp it, we could even graph it as a limit, but we can’t write it out very easily. Hats off for a unique entry, DFalcon!

Is there a way to make posts for numbers like that more layperson friendly in the future?

I'm not really sure how to make that entry more layperson-friendly. That particular number is intentionally structured to prove that some numbers can be really, really hard to write down even though there's a simple explanation for the number you're trying to express. It's supposed to make you think about it a little bit by definition.

At any rate, I wouldn't worry about comprehension for the long-term. Looking ahead, there are very few numbers on this list that don't have a clear anecdotal explanation. Treat this one like an obscure Mario character you've never noticed but made the "bonus weekend extra" list because the list runner thought it was cool and you should be fine!

I loved this entry because it was so specific, and yet manages to prove how much about numbers is hard to express, with, well, numbers. DFalcon’s explanation is a totally understandable idea that’s really hard to express in numeric notation. We can all see that the number he’s talking about exists, and we can grasp it, we could even graph it as a limit, but we can’t write it out very easily. Hats off for a unique entry, DFalcon!

Just like there isn't a property called color in an object - it is a consequence of the interaction between an object and a specific electromagnetic wave, and therefore not a property of the object per se -, it could be that there isn't a thing called 'intrinsic hotness' in the world. But there is! When our study of thermodynamics was finished, it became clear that there is an 'intrinsic hotness' we called temperature (we need the second law of thermodynamics to realize that - defining temperature by the usual thermometers is very problematic since different substances don't agree with each other, it depends on the season, etc).

Anyway, there is a way to measure temperature. Could there be a lower limit for it? Theoretical arguments - from mechanics and thermodynamics - say 'yes'. I think the argument from mechanics is simpler: since temperature can be interpreted as a measure of the 'intrinsic motion' of a system of particles, the minimum we could have is the temperature where every particle is at rest. If we could reach it, however, we would violate the uncertainty principle: the particles would have a simultaneously well defined velocity and position.

I think there is more to it than that, though. To me, it is amazing how everything fits together, and that it works. So yeah, -273.15 is amazing. When we blindly invented temperature, who would have thought that we can't have a thing as cold as (or colder) than -273.15 Celsius?

Well, except instead of closer to zero, it's closer to... the number DFalcon's trying to define, which is a bit more than 1/10th, but a very specific and weird amount more.

Think of it like pi. Pi is exactly the ratio you get when you compare the circumference of a circle to it's diameter. It's close to 3.14, but not exactly. 3.1416 is closer. 3.14159265359 is even closer. The more digits you add the closer you are to the "actual" value. DFalcon has described a value that's "whatever you get when you keep adding n+1 zeroes and then another one after decimal, forever".

Edit: Wait, I thought of maybe an even better example: take one third. In decimal notation, a third is about 0.333. But that's not exactly it... to actually get one third you'd have to keep adding 3's forever, One third is the "limit" this decimal converges to as you keep adding threes... but it never gets there until you add infinitely many threes. You can't actually write that down of course, but fortunately we have a nice compact way to express that same number: 1/3! There just is no compact way to describe the DFalcon number, but it's a number just the same.

Person Who May Not Have Known What I Like About This Number:
muteKi Ranked at #25

Confession time: muteKi voted for 361 because it was 19^2, an a centered triangular, hexagonal, octagonal, and dodecagonal number. What that means is that you can construct a series of concentric shapes (Triangles, Hexagons, etc) with one dot in the center and eventually get to 361.

It’s definitely cool that 361 can do this, but also my favorite board game (that I’m truly pathetic at), Go (or Baduk), is played on a 19x19 grid with 361 spaces. Go is one of those games you can learn the rules to in about 5-10 minutes, but you can spend a lifetime getting good at it and still lose! There is no better reward than knowing how thoroughly you've been beaten by someone with just a little more knowledge/experience than you! Sitting, staring at the board, wondering how you managed to go this wrong despite your significant invested effort! Wondering in awe at how easy they made it look! This does not say anything about my core worldview! I don't care that people who are better at this than me exist! I'm very happy and content! Stop staring at my unforced exclamations!

Go was one of the deepest strategic challenges humanity invented until, like everything, computers ruined it by being way better at it than humans. That happened in 2017. Now in Go we can only dream of living up to the expectations of our future binary overlords (but it’s still really fun to play).

As virtually everyone on this forum probably already knows, 9999 is a maximum stat (under normal circumstances) and single-attack damage amount for numerous games and game systems. But other than that and being the largest 4-digit integer, 9999 has a couple other special properties as well:

9999 can be used as a divisor to generate 4-digit decimal repeating cycles. (for example: 4930/9999 = .493049304930…) It works on all rational numbers (I think, I couldn't find a definitive answer); try it out for yourself!

Back when computer programs had to have line numbers, 9999 was the last possible line number in many of them (BASIC was one example)

9999 has auspicious properties in Chinese culture. In particular the dead would need 9999 coins to buy a burial plot from the Earth goddess.

9999 is a Kaprekar number, which means that its square (99,980,001) can be split into two parts that sum to the original number (9998 + 0001 = 9999).

If you wind up in an emergency in Oman (such as, “Oh man, how did I even get to Oman?!?”), 9999 is the emergency response number.

Finally, because it is the last integer with 4 digits, 9999 often represents a major psychological switch to human brains (even though it’s not a particularly big leap to 10000). 9999 hours is about 416 days. If you’re interested, someone set his Iphone stopwatch so that it could max out at 9999 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds. If you’d like to see what happens when Apple encounters a number this large, here you go (I highly recommend watching with sound the first time, so save it if you’re not in a place where you can do that):

Running average of all numbers under 10 Million: 1824.308333
Running average of all numbers It's reasonable to include: 1824.308333

Jackpot! Like it’s factor 7, 777 is consider a really lucky number (most likely because it’s made up of three 7s). Most US slot machines use “777” as a method of identifying a jackpot. There are also a lot of other cultural and mythological significances to 777:

The Boeing 777 is one of the company’s mainstay aircrafts, and the most-produced model in its fleet.

In the bible, Noah lived for 777 years.

In a Unix operating system, the command “chmod 777” gives read, write, and execute permissions to a given file. In other words, there are no restrictions to access.

Like it seems to with almost any repeated digit number, numerology has some ideas about 777.

Although it’s not a perfect connection, Prince wrote the song “777-9311” for The Time. It’s still worth listening to for it’s crazy drum pattern and unique groove. This number was, in fact, the number of Prince guitarist Dez Dickerson’s actual phone. Because humanity can’t help itself, it caused the phone to ring off the hook upon the song’s release and prompted Dickerson to change his number.

Running average of all numbers under 10 Million: 1674.692857
Running average of all numbers It's reasonable to include: 1674.692857

Genji Glove is the most wildly inconsistent piece of equipment in the series.

1: Glove-slot armor that gives immunity to Poison/Petrify. Remakes only, of course.
2: A strong, heavy arm-slot armor.
3: Same, although in the remake, it provides a bunch of status immunities.
4: A relatively weak late-game arm-slot armor. When Kain last rejoins the party, he comes with a pair.
5: An accessory that provides some defense and immunity to Toad and Paralyze.
6: Now we start getting weird. A relic that lets you equip (and attack with) two weapons.
CC7: An accessory that breaks the damage limit.
8: Mysteriously absent.
9: A heavy gauntlet. Teaches High Tide, but then every piece of equipment teaches something in 9, so it's mostly unremarkable.
10: Any Kimahri armor where the dominant ability is Break HP Limit.
12: An accessory that increases your combo rate.
13: An accessory that breaks the damage limit.
13-2: An accessory that gives Resist Damage 12%.
15: An accessory that gives 30% resistance to lightning, dark, and ballistics.
T: An accessory that gives +2 PA/MA.
TA/TA2: An accessory that boosts stats a bit.